Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the preliminary result financial year 2024. I am Yusuf, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and that this conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or for broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Tobias Ender. Please go ahead. Your line is open, sir. You may now proceed.
Operator, we're ready to go. They're going live. Now, keep it in a minute, please.
We are now live. We may now proceed with the conference.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon, good morning, wherever you are. Thank you for listening in to our today's analyst and i nvestor call for the preliminary results regarding the full year 2024. This is Tobias Ender speaking. Glad to have you here on the line. I'm happy to have also here with me, CEO Asoka Wöhrmann and CFO Martin Praum. Asoka will present you an overview of the market environment and operational activity. Afterwards, Martin will guide you through our preliminary financials for 2024, as well as our guidance for 2025. This will be followed by a Q&A session. During today's call, we will refer to the results presentation, which you can find on our website in our IR section, home, under most recent publications. In case of questions after the call, our IR team is happy to take your call.
As usual, this call will be recorded and will be made available on our website. We will also offer a call transcript for further reference. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Asoka to start the presentation. Asoka.
Thank you, Tobias. Dear ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome also from my side. The market environment in 2024, as the previous couple of years, continued to be challenging. Look back, let me say that PATRIZIA successfully navigated through the last 12 months. As we said in our nine-month results, the market improved slowly since the second half of 2024. Interest rates and inflation have stabilized. This has led to an overall stabilization in the valuation of the AUMs, which is better than we initially expected. Despite the challenges faced last year, when the right opportunities rose, we grabbed them. We invested more than EUR 1.8 billion on behalf of our clients in 2024. Infrastructure transactions contributed the most to the overall transactions volume, which is in line with market trends and attractiveness of infrastructure right now.
In 2024, we developed and implemented also a new midterm strategy and set ourselves ambitious targets. We intend to reach an AUM worth more than EUR 100 billion by 2030. We identified five strategic growth areas, and we have a clear plan how to drive this growth in the next years. Within those five strategic growth areas, we aim to raise EUR 30 billion of equity by 2030. These five growth areas are Re-Infra , which is the convergence of real estate and infrastructure as a new asset class driven by technology. Examples for this emerging asset class include data centers, EV charging stations, and rooftop solar panels. There is the European infrastructure. Infrastructure is currently the most popular asset class, and in Europe, the market is mature and ripe for our mid-marketplace to generate attractive returns. The third growth area is living, where we are coming also from.
We have successfully delivered strong returns for investors in the living sector for 40 years and are known for residential expertise. Fourth is value-add. We have a strong track record in executing on value-add deals, generating the higher returns the risk class provides for our clients. Finally, we have ADVANTAGE Investment Partners, or AIP called, our independent multi-manager platform. The platform has delivered strong growth even in the challenging past few years and is forecasting greater growth in the midterm. Last year, we raised EUR 1 billion through three of key growth areas. EUR 4.4 billion was raised in real estate. EUR 4.3 billion was raised in European infrastructure. EUR 4.3 billion was raised through AIP. Coming from EUR 4.5 billion in 2023 means we doubled our fundraising achievements in 2024. Historically, we have seen higher inflows. Markets are gradually opening up for new investment in real assets.
We don't expect the market to see a strong recovery in the first half of 2025, but we see higher investment activity, especially in the living sector and value-add real estate. Both growth areas promise attractive IRRs. The ECB has started to lower interest rates again, supporting the real estate market and consequently the end of the rise in prime yields. This is supporting a positive outlook for the real asset markets in 2025 as well. With repricing behind us, the living sector emerges as a clear investor favorite because it is offering a compelling rental growth. The office sector, in the meantime, went from the lowest yielding sector in 2021 to the highest yielding in 2024. However, we believe secondary and outdated buildings, especially offices, will continue to see headwinds in the future. Infrastructure remains a strategic growth area for PATRIZIA.
Infrastructure transactions accounted for $300 billion in 2024, only slightly down from the $325 billion or million figure in 2023. The U.S. had the highest amount of private infrastructure capital investment, with Europe slightly behind. However, both fell relative to their levels in 2023. APAC grew year-on-year with strong deal volumes in the second half of 2024. In 2024, investment in renewable energies dominated the infrastructure deal flow. Capital raising for infrastructure remained relatively low, with around $95 billion raised in 2024 and increasing by $1 billion compared to 2023. I have a small correction. I said earlier about the talk about the infrastructure transactions. The infrastructure transaction accounted for $300 billion in 2024 and only slightly down from the $325 billion figure in 2023. PATRIZIA remained an active buyer in 2024, acquiring assets on behalf of our clients worth EUR 1.8 billion and disposing of assets for EUR 1.1 billion.
Let me briefly highlight some key investments last year. We invested into the leading Italian waste treatment and recovery group, expanding our energy from waste platform. We were the sole institutional lender to the debt facility raised by a renewable energy company in Portugal. In APAC, we successfully entered the Philippine market with two deals. First, in one of the country's leading rooftop solar developers. Second, into a new urban mobility solutions platform. Our hard work in 2024 paid off early this year with a couple of strategic deals. A strategic investment into Aligned Data Centers, one of the leading data center providers in North and South America. We secured the new Italian headquarters of SAP. We will expand our organic AUM growth in 2025. Our clear ambition is to future-proof PATRIZIA in a world in transition.
This year, we are laying the foundation for our growth path to more than EUR 100 billion in AUM in the midterm. We will focus our efforts on establishing new, attractive, scalable investment solutions for our clients. We step up our fundraising activity to create more value for our clients. Our ambitious plan is mission-critical, especially in the light of market conditions turning more favorable. Achieving attractive returns in the real asset requires a transition from asset allocation to active asset management. Asset managers need boots on the ground being closer to their assets to generate higher returns. This is clearly placed to our strength. This is why value-add remains a key growth area for us, where we can achieve double-digit IRRs for our clients. Living remains a strategic growth area for us.
Living is far more than residential with attractive subsectors such as affordable housing, micro-living, co-living, and senior living in 2025. We are very excited about the future growth opportunities in the new emerging Re-Infra asset class. Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a world in transition. We can see and feel this every day. Apart from the geopolitical turmoil we are witnessing, we see that economic and social change is driven by four powerful megatrends: the digital, urban, energy, and living transitions. We call the DUEL megatrends. All are powered by technology. The digital transition with more connectivity, smarter solutions for buildings and infrastructure, where cloud services and artificial intelligence play a decisive role. The urban transition driven by the smartening up of our cities and buildings, and smarter mobility within our urban environments.
The energy transition to cleaner and renewable energy solutions, helping to combat climate change and create a more circular economy. Finally, the living transition driven by geographic change, new ways of working, and innovative solutions to build smarter communities, more affordable housing. We at PATRIZIA believe we are very well positioned to leverage the DUEL megatrends to offer smart and attractive investment solutions to our clients in the coming years. With that, I will hand over to our CFO, Martin Praum.
Thank you, Asoka. Let's continue on page 11 of the presentation. Asoka mentioned to you and talked about the fundraising activity and investment volumes. Both of these KPIs certainly have an impact on our AUM development, which you can see on page 11. A slight decline of 1.5% year-on-year. However, for us, there are two important messages in this graph.
First of all, we bought more than we sold for our clients, so we have net organic growth of EUR 0.7 billion, even in a bottoming-out year. Secondly, valuation impact has come down as well, only minus EUR 0.9 billion. We see really a bottoming-out of the market. If you look at AUM development on a quarterly or sequential basis, you will also see that AUM actually increased quarter on quarter from Q3 to Q4. As said before, our investment focus was especially on infrastructure, living, and the multi-manager ADVANTAGE Investment Partners, and we rather sold in the segments of office, retail, and logistics. How did that impact our AUM split? Today, we reduced our exposure to office by 2 percentage points.
We reduced exposure to retail by around 1.5 percentage points, and we increased our exposure to infra by more than 2 percentage points, meaning that meanwhile, around 18% of our AUM is exposed to infrastructure. Let's go to page 12 of the presentation. Here you see the composition of our P&L. As we mentioned in our IR release, we saw continued pressure on revenues by around 15%, and we counteracted against that with cost reductions of around 11%. Also worth mentioning here is a relatively high contribution from other income. Also, you will see that we continue to work on our cost base. We booked a re-org charge of net close to EUR 11 million in the year 2024, which burdened the EBITDA. Perhaps two, three points important to mention on this page.
If you look at other income, then this is not simply other income driven by release of provisions, but also in here, there are certain deconsolidation effects, which I already mentioned to you during earlier calls. If you basically compare other income and net sales revenues and co-investment income, there are two effects in here, gross, that actually you should net with each other. In other income, around EUR 14 million is a deconsolidation effect, and net sales revenues and co-investment income was burdened by a related effect by EUR 13 million. Actually, the net sales revenues and co-investment income bar should actually be higher, and the other income bar should be lower if you analyze our numbers. The same is true for so-called recharges, which had a positive impact on other income, but at the same time, a negative impact on other pillars here, especially in operating expenses.
If you net that off, then you also see probably a more true picture about what was generated and what was one-off. As a general remark on EBITDA, I think we talk about a year in which the market bottomed out, and we safeguarded our EBITDA level again despite a re-org charge with EUR 45 million. Also worth mentioning that net income after minorities showed a material improvement year-on-year with over EUR 12 million, as reported in today's IR release. Let's have a closer look at revenues on page 13. Starting with management fees, you'll see a reduction of 9% year-on-year. However, we have to bear in mind that in 2023, we had a larger contribution from development service fees for our clients and additionally from debt structuring fees in total, slightly over EUR 8 million.
If you adjust for that, the level that was achieved in these two areas in 2024 was subsequently lower than the decline is rather 5.9%. These are really late effects of the lower AUM base that came in the year 2023 versus 2022. Transaction fees, stable, also confirming that there is a certain stabilization in the market. Lastly, performance fees, still we saw a major decline, certainly driven by a new cycle beginning and lower realizations in the market. As we mentioned before, we still have a good pool of performance fees which we can harvest in the next two years. Again, partially here, we are not in the driver's seat in the non-discretionary mandates that we run. Let's go to the cost side. I think here is an important message on page 14.
We did reduce costs by around EUR 13 million or 11%, reacting to the 15% revenue drop. We especially worked on headcount costs and also on other operating expenses. If you follow PATRIZIA in the past two years, I think this is the most material improvement in cost efficiency and cost base that the company delivered over the last few years. We did address the issue, and we're starting into the new cycle with a much leaner starting base for profitability. Let's go to page 15, capital allocation. Here we give you an overview on balance sheet capital, on group balance sheet capital that we have invested in certain areas, promoting our products, strategic co-investments, seed, and warehousing investments. You can see we in total invested close to EUR 470 million historically, which currently has a fair market value of around EUR 840 million.
You will also see certain bias towards residential exposure, which we still very much like because we like the market fundamentals and think that the money is well invested. As you have seen also in the past, we will actively manage that portfolio. If there are market opportunities, we will increase positions or divest if it is appropriate. On page 16, a quick update on our balance sheet. You will see that if we start with liquidity, liquidity has come down from the end of last year. However, this was primarily driven by the redemption of a bonded loan tranche. We delivered the company further on group level. We also did co-investments and also paid dividends. These were the major drivers for the change in cash. Unchanged, we still hold around EUR 6.1 million of treasury shares, which are currently worth around EUR 50 million on our balance sheet.
In terms of balance sheet ratios, unchanged, we think we have a very strong balance sheet with an equity ratio of 63% and net equity ratio of 69%. This, then going to the next page, 17, also really supported us and the board of directors in the decision to propose to shareholders in the next AGM an increased dividend of EUR 0.35. First of all, we wanted to deliver on the dividend strategy that we have announced last year. Secondly, we think that the strong balance sheet allows such payments. Thirdly, if we look at operating cash flow, the one that's published in our annual report will be around EUR 13 million. However, also driven by special accounting impact, you would want to adjust for certain Whitehelm elements here and adjust it for that.
The operating cash flow was rather in the region of EUR 40 million, so well covering the dividend payment that we propose to our shareholders this year. Lastly, page 18, the outlook for 2025. In terms of AUM, we think with the market bottoming out, with valuation stabilizing, and with the growth initiatives we have started, in terms of midpoint growth, we target a 6% growth of AUM. In terms of profitability, also focusing on further efficiency of the platform and further effects from cost cuttings we have already initiated, we believe that at midpoint in 2025, we can grow EBITDA by 11%. Basically talking about a range of EUR 40 million-EUR 60 million. Again, focus will be on organic growth. Secondly, on cost ratios, efficiency to deliver this result that we target. With that, I would like to hand back to the operator to start the Q&A session.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Andre Remke from Baader Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, Sir. Thanks for the presentation. A couple of questions from my side, please. First, on AUM growth, you're targeting for what is the number of signed transactions with the volume last year, both by acquisitions and disposals, and what share of that has not yet closed in the 2024 numbers? This is the first question, please.
Quickly, just give me a sec, Andre. I'll have that answer right away. The signed transactions were around EUR 2 billion for the year, of which around EUR 1.4 billion acquisitions and EUR 0.7 billion disposals. Also here, we've been net buyer in the market. As usual, a certain part of that hasn't closed yet. That will be a positive spillover for the year 2025.
Okay. On the valuation result, did I get it right that you had already a positive contribution in the fourth quarter?
A tiny, small positive contribution in the fourth quarter, yes.
Should we expect this to go ahead, i.e., no further pressure on that in the next quarter?
Andre, in our planning, we have not included major valuation effects for 2025, but this would certainly be a further supportive item for AUM growth. In our business planning, it's based on organic growth, so more acquisitions than disposals in 2025.
Okay. Perfect. More in general, a question. There are some rising uncertainty concerning the higher federal debt and higher interest rates just recently. On the other hand, they're talking about infrastructure spendings. Do you see any impact on your business arising from that?
Yeah. Andre, I think it's a great question. I think first of all, we have to look now really clear plans. You have seen the German 10-year rate has reacted and the announcement affected quite heavily. I do think we have to see the clear plans. In general, in my opinion, the demand for infrastructure manifested earlier without this announcement already very positively as I outlined. I do think after that, the investment climate for infrastructure will be much, much more positive.
I am expecting, Andre, more programs have to come and have to be placed in the market, private, public investments. That is something we are looking on and very close. It is too early to say what that will impact PATRIZIA's clients and capabilities and also our plans. In general, I am seeing that as a positive trend because I think the governments have to contain the long-term rates on lower levels to finance the budgets and finance and not to have a problem in refinancing of their debt, what they have already. In my view, generally positive, no precise answer what we can give at the moment because no precise plans are there. I think in general, infrastructure one is very welcome.
I do think, by the way, the new government will focus, and you can see the U.K. government, European government, but also German government have to focus also on living sector to create an affordable housing approach to get more buy-in from the societies is very positive for us if we go there in this direction.
Okay. Excellent. Thank you. The next question goes to the available liquidity. This is declining again. You mentioned the efforts for co-investments and warehousing. For the first time, you have a net debt negative or you have a net debt position. What could we expect for this next year? Will you become more cautious on further deployment of liquidity, at least as long as the already done seed investments are not past the client?
Yeah, sure, Andre. First of all, and that is also what we're showing on one of the slides 15 in the presentation, we already have a relatively high exposure of our balance sheet capital to certain investments. We will certainly very closely monitor that and also manage this portfolio more actively. As I said before, this could also mean certain divestments in certain areas generating liquidity. Coming to the first part of your question, we expect liquidity and also available liquidity to remain broadly stable, perhaps initially trending down a little bit, but then going up again towards the end of the year.
Okay. The last question on the reorg expenses. Do you expect further expenses also this year? Because the EBITDA of, let's say, midpoint EUR 50 million, this is lower than excluding reorg EBITDA of last year of EUR 56 million. Do you expect a reduction in the profitability?
No, Andre. First of all, we have not planned any reorg costs in our budget 2025. You have to bear in mind that basically if you adjust for one-offs, then we start at a EUR 20 million lower base due to other income. Adjust for the EUR 11 million reorg, then it is around about EUR 10 million lower base than what we have shown here with EUR 45 million. Basically the core of the story is that we expect a higher quality of earnings in 2025 with the targets that we have given.
Okay. Thanks. Very last question maybe. In 2023, the impact from the earnout payments, since again there was roughly EUR 10 million, what was the number for 2024? Do you expect any earnouts this year?
The impact on our number of 2024 was around EUR 5 million in the P&L in PersEx. For 2025 and 2026, the accounting impact really depends on the target achievement of the infrastructure team. If they deliver a certain level of revenues and profitability, then a certain P&L burden might come into play. If not, then also the P&L burden in PersEx will not materialize. We have digested that in our guidance range.
This earnout structure, it lasts until 2026 and ends there, or?
Yes, correct.
Okay. Perfect. That is all my side. Thank you very much, Sir.
Thank you, Andre.
Thank you, Andre.
The next question comes from Jochen Schmitt from Metzler. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. I have three questions, please. Firstly, on the Dawonia fund, still you have not announced how to finally proceed with the Dawonia fund and the structure of your mandate in the future.
My question is, how has the Dawonia fund been included in your earnings outlook? Second question, does your outlook on 2025 include any major non-recurring items? Third and last question, did staff costs in Q4 include a release of provision? These are my questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Let me take them one by one. First of all, Dawonia, we are still in constructive discussions with the investors of that fund. I think we all agree that we want to extend that very successful mandate and portfolio. I hope you have still one of the most successful residential investments in the German market. Also, as we mentioned before, it is a larger group of investors that we need to align for the extension, which simply takes a little while. Also here, in terms of performance of Dawonia, we are still very happy with the exposure.
Also here, we've seen evaluation stabilization in the second half of the year. We have included a certain amount of Dawonia contribution in 2025, specifically the profit participation and also the return on our 5% co-investment in the company, as usual. Second point, no, we do not have included any non-recurring items in the budget 2025. Your last question was on staff costs, right?
Yes, exactly. It looks like Q4 delivered a relatively low number. The question was, was there a release of a provision?
Yes. Sorry. The improvement in profitability in the fourth quarter also came from lower staff costs, as you know, in the quarters one to three. We still assumed a 100% bonus pool. After the final target achievement, this was reduced in the fourth quarter and hence also helped to lower the PersEx for the full year.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jochen.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Kai Klose from Berenberg.
Yes, good afternoon. I've got three questions, if I may. The first one is on page 13. Could you remind us what was the performance fee contribution in 2023 and 2024 from Dawonia? Second question is on page 11 regarding redemptions, which were EUR 0.9 billion last year, EUR 0.6 billion this year. What do you expect for 2025? The third question is regarding the dividend. Could you indicate maybe already what is the underlying EPS which you use as underlying for the dividend decisions? The question is, is the dividend covered or not? Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you, Kai. We start with the last one. In terms of EPS, we talk about EUR 0.14 per share, out of my head. The dividend is, as I mentioned before, not covered by EPS, but it is covered by operating cash flow. As we said in our dividend policy, longer term, we want to have the dividend payments covered by our net income as well. As you might remember, in our net income, we have some special effects. For example, from the annual amortization of fund management contracts, which are non-cash items, which has an impact of around EUR 11 million on our numbers. That is something you should bear in mind when it comes to dividend payouts. In terms of redemptions, it is not only redemptions, but also cash flows paid to clients. This is basically the annual dividends out of the funds paid to clients, which lowers the AUM base.
I think with the market bottoming out, something between EUR 0 and EUR 500 million could be an assumption for payments in 2025. Your last question was on the Dawonia impact. In 2024, the performance fee had an impact of around EUR 15 million.
Thank you. Maybe to follow up on that, what was that Dawonia 2023? Second question, what were the real redemptions? When you say it was redemptions and payouts to clients, what was the amount of redemptions in 2024 and what do you expect for 2025?
Okay. First of all, on Dawonia in 2023, the impact was close to EUR 20 million. In terms of real redemptions, we would really only talk about a handful of potential redemptions. It is really not material in our view.
As we speak, Kai, I just want to make one addition to the question of Jochen Schmidt before about the 2025 budget. I actually mentioned that you could argue that there is one off included in 2025, and this is the different accounting treatment for Whitehelm, which could burden PersEx. This is something that you could treat as an impact if you look at the numbers. I hope that answered also your question, Kai.
Thanks. Maybe one last one from my side. Yeah, sorry. Maybe one last one from my side. What number you apply is, you mentioned operating cash flow, or what is the reported number is operating cash flow per share for the dividend 2023 and 2024?
If you look at the stated operating cash flow in 2024, then you would talk about EUR 0.14. As I said, if you adjust, because in this operating cash flow, P&L, accounting driven, are certain Whitehelm effects. If you would exclude that, then we would talk about an operating cash flow of EUR 40 million. That would be EUR 0.43 roundabout as a basis.
Thanks. Thank you.
Thank you, Kai.
The next question comes from Philipp Kaiser from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for taking my question. And thanks for the presentation. Starting with just an understanding one on slide four, the target of the equity, the added up volume until 2030 for each of those growth areas adding up to EUR 30 billion. Is that right?
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Again, you have a yeah. You want to continue, no? Yeah.
When do you expect the equity raises significantly speed up until 2030?
Yeah. I do think, look, in my opinion, 2025, as I said, first half of the year is still sluggish. Last week or two weeks ago, we had in South France the meeting. You can see there's an interest, as I said, for transactions. They are looking for many, many investors looking for opportunities, also global investors in Europe, but they are not that confident that they will invest immediately next week and next month. I do think the second half of the year will show more, in my opinion, momentum and traction. 2026 and 2027, and I do think in other plans, from 2026, we are expecting more comfort is coming in to invest. That means real estate in all the two areas, as I said, in the living sector is, in my opinion, an evergreen now for the next six, seven, eight years.
There's a backlog, a huge backlog in the societies and industry. Politicians promise so much. They have to deliver someway something. That's the one thing. The second topic, I think, value-add. That's the name of the game as a risk class, what people are looking for. Because also with the higher, let me say, stabilized higher rates than for five years ago means I do think, first, there's opportunities in living. Value-add people will be looking in. There will be also logistics, not much. I think offices will come in some years. I do think from 2027 on, we will see much more momentum in this cycle. This cycle will be different than the last cycle. That means people will have to look much more now, first of all, ERR perspective they have to take. There is more volatility in the market.
This cycle, we do not know the length will be not again 10 years plus. Therefore, I do think I am expecting 2027 will be in a market that what we can see as a great, stronger momentum into our plan to EUR 100 billion. Again, we have a revaluation in. We have the EIP platform, the clubbing platform in Copenhagen, what I mentioned, is also bringing a part of the AUMs in. Our two layers, real estate, but also infrastructure, are the driver of the AUMs, but also, in my opinion, also for the top line important.
Perfect. Thanks a lot. With regards to page 18 and your guidance, you also stated that you expect a pickup gradually in the second half of this year. Are there any signs, hard facts for this pickup? What of this pickup is already included in your AUM guidance?
Do you need a certain pickup to achieve the lower end, or is it like the pickup we spoke about, the midpoint or the upper end, to get a feeling what's already included and what do you see in the market already?
Certainly, first of all, we have a certain pipeline that's building up. If you look at the growth to reach the lower end, that's EUR 1.6 billion of AUM growth that we need to deliver. Again, we're actually thankful. It's good we made these strategic acquisitions that we can offer our clients a broad product offering. We're not only a monoliner anymore, but we can offer Infra, Re-Infra . Especially Value Add is much more in the spotlight now. This is where we have interesting discussions with clients that are opening up to new investment ideas.
That is really supporting our view of how the year could run. No doubt, the recent German bazooka has had some impact on yields, also on bond yields. Many see that as a smaller shock to the market. You also see that the market is digesting that the 10-year bond is also slowly coming back again because the market understands that there is not going to be EUR 500 billion issuance overnight in Germany. Also, this money will not hit the economy overnight. Interest rates, yes, do play a major role for our business, no doubt. At the end of the day, it is more, do we deliver solutions that our clients need? This is exactly in the DUEL megatrends that Asoka mentioned. This is where demand is building up. That is what we are convinced of.
Perfect. You already mentioned your pipeline. Will this current pipeline, which the gap between full year 2024 and the lower end of 2025 guidance already, if you just execute this pipeline? Or do you need a certain pickup to reach the lower end?
No, we would not. If it's not already locked in at this stage, we would need a certain element of new business. I think this is bread and butter business and normal, especially for this part of the cycle.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks a lot. To come to the staff costs down 30%. You already mentioned that there's the most material achievement. Do you see any further potential? Perfect with the exact number, but I don't get it, I guess. Kind of a feeling how much more inefficiency might be or can be reduced in the next couple of years or from the personal expenses or for your staff base?
Are you as lean as possible once the market comes back?
Yeah. Thank you for the question. First of all, I can confirm that our budget and guidance for 2025 is not based on significant increase in revenues. As we said before, it's an assumption for a modest recovery by the second half. From that, you can derive that, yes, we see further efficiency potential on the cost side. Especially, you will see that some of the measures we have taken will only come into full effect in 2025 because there's always a time when you reduce staff. That is something which will benefit 2025. I mentioned that before, we took a re-org charge in the fourth quarter of last year. Also from that, we'll see some cost-saving potential that will impact 2025.
Okay. Thanks a lot. Overall effect, looking at the entire cost base, same potential as last year, possible?
What do you mean with the same potential? You mean that we can reduce costs by another EUR 30 million? I think this would probably be a little bit over-aggressive. I think we can confirm that a downward trend in costs is something that we certainly have as our internal ambition.
Perfect. Thank you a lot. All from my side.
Thank you.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Manuel Martin from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Gentlemen, two questions from my side, please. A follow-up question on the guidance for full year 2025. The AUM guidance points to an increase in assets under management from EUR 57 billion reached, sorry, EUR 56 billion reached in 2024, up to EUR 58 billion minimum in the gu idance.
While the EBITDA guidance leaves a bit of room to the downside, not a lot, I must say, but EUR 40 million low point would be below the EUR 45 million achieved in 2024. Could there be another negative aspect coming into the P&L despite growing AUM? Maybe you can elaborate a bit on this, please.
Sure, Manuel. If you look at the composition of our results in 2024, and I mentioned that before, you had this element of other income. Part of that was recurring, and part of that was non-recurring. In our budget, we have assumed a much lower, rather close to zero impact from other income. Basically, you have to catch up for that. That implies a certain growth in business driven by equity rates, driven by investments, and driven by AUM growth.
It is by no means we talk of profitability, rather the target for higher quality of income in 2025.
Okay. I see. Second and last question. On follow-up question on the staff costs, the efficiencies you gained in 2024 regarding staff costs, could you give us some details on the fields where you achieved these redundancies, whether it concerned purely, I do not know, middle office, back office, or also a bit front office? Maybe you can give us a flavor there, please.
We have, since 2023, reduced more than 100 FTEs if you look into that. That is now, I think, more than 100. I do think what we have focused in 2024, since we also installed our new investment platform, but also new organization, we took nearly 10% of our senior management people we reduced.
It's important, in my opinion, also for the messaging for the organization. That's the one thing. We reduced the complexity. We created now bigger teams. We are creating more platforms. We are integrating more. All that duplication, all that has led that we really reduce our staff costs. We will further refine that all. I think middle and back offices, we reduce more in 2023 than in 2024. 2024 was more due to the re-org of the organization since July when we started. I think in 2023, as I said, middle back, now in refinement also in the senior management levels.
Okay. Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Manuel.
The next and last question is a follow-up from Kai Klose, Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yes. Sorry, and it's me again. I've got one last question on page 21 of the presentation regarding the portfolio structure. Do you intend to sell the real estate logistics portfolio and the two value-add offices in 2025? The second question on that, what have you budgeted as the warehousing assets for this year? Thanks.
Kai, we have not made a decision on that, so we cannot comment on whether and when we want to sell that. As I said, we will have a close look at the exposure, and we do that on a regular basis. We look where the market develops, and when there are good opportunities, we will execute. For the time being, I would assume that, again, the warehousing exposure will stay rather stable with smaller changes throughout the year.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Kai.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Q&A session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Martin Praum for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for listening in and for all the questions that you had. We very much look forward to discussing further with you during the coming conferences and roadshows and hope to speak and see you then. Thank you, everyone. Have a good day. Bye-bye. Thank you.